Last week, Their Majesties King Harald and Queen Sonja officially visited the Argentine Republic for three days. Never before have Their Majesties visited Argentina, and the last and only visit by the Norwegian crown to Argentina was in 1967 by King Olav.
Wednesday, the Royal Couple went to Plaza de Noruega in the neighborhood Belgrano, where they were received by Mr Haracio Larreta, the Mayor of Buenos Aires. He unveiled a plaque and declared the square open after a time of renovation as well as giving over keys and declaring Their Majesties honored guest of the city. The park was decorated with Norwegian and Argentine flags and members of the Norwegian Community in Argentina were lined up on each site of a red carpet waving small Norwegian flags. A big group of Kulturstudier students went together to meet the Norwegian Royal family, and two of the students had even bought the Argentine national drink mate to hand over to Their Majesties. The session was accompanied by Edvard Greigs “Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 – Morning Mood”. As King Harald and Queen Sonja said hello and talked to almost everyone of the Norwegians and Norwegian decedents in the park, many students got the have a little royal chat in the sun. The Minister of Trade, Mr Torbjørn Røe Isaksen, was also part of the delegation and ending up posting a group photo with the students on his Instagram account.
Their Royal Highnesses also met president Mauricio Macri in Casa Rosada, Argentina’s presidential palace situated on Plaza de Mayo. They did a wreath laying ceremony at Plaza San Martín, where there is a statue of the Argentine general and liberation hero San Martín who led the liberation of Argentina (1816), Chile and Peru from the Spanish. They visited the Palace of the Argentine National Congress, designed by an Italian architect and opened in 1906, and the Palace of Justice of the Argentine Nation, the seat of the Supreme Court. Not to mention a visit to the Parque de la Memoria next to the river Río de la Plata, where the “flights of death” took of under the last military dictatorship (1976-1983). Victims of the dictatorship where alive thrown off the airplanes into the river to die, and the park is a place for remembrance with the names of the victims engraves on massive concrete walls.
-Hilda-